I don't know if I should be thankful or upset that I didn't get onto ants back in March. They would have been a lot of fun that time of the year, but I would have went overboard I'm sure. I'm nervous I will go overboard come this spring when the queens start to fly. Some could fly as early as February if I'm lucky enough to find the winter ants when they fly.
It started by accident, I was actually trying to build this closed terrianium thing and I kept grabbing ants. I'd feel guilty and let them go, then catch more to satisfy my need to watch them.
Turns out the ants I was catching were winter ants. I left out treats and tried to follow them back home. Spent over a week trying to catch them at the right Temps but their nest seemed to be under a wood log pile on... and not my land.
No luck.
I heard about these things called acorn ants and I started grabbing acorns everytime I went hiking. I actually got lucky and found some and then I made every mistake I could.
They had mites and they may have died .. I'm not sure and I'm not going to find out until March when the Temps start to cool.
I threw their poor little acorn into a high humidity terrianium that was like 90 degrees when the real world was like 40. I tried to put them outside but the nights were too cold.
I'm telling you.. I made every mistake I could.
So, after much research and regret they are in a mini fridge that stick to between 45 and 50 degrees.
I also looked into the GAN project and bought a queen and her brood and put them in as well.
I'm being good and leaving them alone.
In the meantime I'm buying little gizmos and stuff for when the ants wake up and learning about catching queens after their flight. I purchased some hydrostone plaster with the idea that my mistakes would be good rocks to entice new queens with.
I really hope I didn't kill the acorn ants.
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